DECEMBER 15, 1997

Germans squaring for a fight

THE German cigarette industry says it will be challenging the planned European Union ban on tobacco advertising. Ludger╩Staby, the head of the German Cigarette Industry Association and chief executive of Reemtsma, the tobacco company which sells the West brand of tobacco, told German newspapers that the ban is "a regulatory crime".

Staby said that the tobacco industry would wait to see whether or not the German government took action against the ban but if it failed to do so he would challenge the ban in Germany's constitutional courts.